


Fond is a Moon

by magikfanfic



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Pre-Rogue One, back story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-16
Updated: 2017-02-16
Packaged: 2018-09-24 20:56:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9786752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magikfanfic/pseuds/magikfanfic
Summary: There's a story you learn as a child in NiJedha. If you walk backwards you can face your sins and defeat them. At least that’s one way to tell it.





	

**Author's Note:**

> More baby guardians fic because it's my jam. Also I like flipping situations around and finding weird writing prompts for myself like the walking backwards thing.

There's a story you learn as a child in NiJedha. If you walk backwards you can face your sins and defeat them. At least that’s one way to tell it.

Some of the communities put more emphasis on it than others. It can be seen as a child's game or revered as a way to give up burdens. It is not abnormal to catch people, young and old, walking backwards through the streets in the hours leading up to the new year, their faces turned forward as their feet move carefully, their eyes scanning the horizon for a sight of the thing they want to conquer, the thing they want to leave in the dust of the past instead of carrying it with them like a stone around their neck to drag them down in the water. 

It is not a practice that is done at the Temple of the Whills. One of the tenants of their faith is that everything is as the Force wills it, after all. This does not exempt them from being able to make their own choices, of course, or even suggest that there are not bad choices, but it does speak to the fact that all of the possible choices are part of the energy that guides the universe. In such, they are not really identified as sins, they are not things that mark someone in a negative way. They are learning tools, they are part of the structure of the whole even if they might not be great on their own. Sometimes new initiates carry the habit in with them, but it never lasts. It is quickly and quietly washed away with other beliefs from their past as they adopt those of the temple. 

At the temple, they walk backwards in their training, and it has no greater meaning than that. No one expects it to lift a burden, no one expects it to ease their mind or make them feel better. It is simply a step, a way to retreat from an advance before hurrying back into the fray. Or it is to help with balance or confidence. There are lots of reasons to walk backwards in the Temple of the Whills. Sometimes it is just because you are a child in awe of the spiraling, beautiful art on the ceiling. Sometimes it is a way to trick your friends when you are playing hide and seek. Occasionally it is just because it is boring not to do it. But no one does it with the expectation that a spectral vision of their past misdeeds will rise up to greet them, ready and willing to be taken to the ground. 

Baze has lived at the temple for as long as he can remember. If there was a life, a family, before the masters and the other initiates, it is long lost to the fog of his memory. This has never bothered him. The masters can be strict, but they are loving. Besides he likes the mantras, the books, the constant learning. There is always something new for him to discover, and he likes meditating, feeling the Force curl around him, soft like water, warm like a cat around his ankles. It is never more than a dim little spot in his mind, a gentle pressure around him, but that is more than enough. Baze is a child, and does not need grand gestures to accept that something is real.

He is eight when the masters bring a new boy to their room. It is not abnormal for new faces to turn up out of the blue. This happens all the time. The masters have explained it as the will of the Force, and Baze believes that, he trusts it, but he knows that it is more than that. After all, he has spoken to the other boys, the new ones and the old ones alike. A lot of them have stories to tell, of families who were too poor to keep them, parents who died, ones who saw it as an honor to follow the Force, or just people who wanted a better life for their offspring so they took them to the temple. There are as many reasons to come to the temple as there are faces inside of it even if the Masters tell them that they are all one in the Force, the children know better. Children normally do even if adults will not see it.

The new boy is thin, small, made smaller by the way he hunches his shoulders tight as though curling his body over his more vulnerable chest and face in anticipation of a blow. Despite this he is quick to smile, though Baze notes even from across the room that the brightness of the smile does not always quite reach to his eyes. It gets stuck in the expanse of his face. It shows off all of his teeth and his pink gums as though it is maybe the mirroring of a proper smile without the feeling behind it. 

They are divided by levels of training rather than age because it is easier to keep everyone on the same page. It is because of this that Baze is not immediately able to meet the new boy despite the strange, incessant tugging in his belly that he needs to, that this is a step he should take. It feels like the Force in that it is warm and soft and presses gently at the base of his spine and the back of his neck, but Baze is a good boy so he does not step out of line to follow it even though not doing so makes his skin itch. He meditates until it relaxes. When he opens his eyes, he is startled to see that the new boy, on the other side of the room, is copying his form, and they look at each other across the space. This time when the boy smiles it does reach his eyes, and Baze returns it.

It does not take long for the new boy to find him. They are on a break between lessons, and Baze is meditating under one of the trees in the garden. There are not many trees on Jedha, he knows, because when he climbs the outside stairs, the ones that go around the temple, he can gaze out in any direction and see sand on the horizon. It goes on further than the city, and the holy city itself is very big to Baze’s eyes. The sand is bigger. Baze thinks that maybe the sand is like the Force, ever present, always there just outside where they are but inescapable. He doesn’t mind the sand, but he is glad that they have trees and flowers inside the temple walls. The shade and the smell of them is intoxicating, and it can be easy for him to slip from meditation to just enjoying being outside. It is something he tries to work on, become better at not getting distracted by the beauty of the world.

He is focusing on breathing, working on feeling that twist, that warm little knowledge, when it seems to blossom out around him, startling and shocking, a whip of blue across the blackness that greets him when he closes his eyes. Baze sucks a breath in and opens his eyes, pulling away before he even realizes that someone has plopped down in front of him. It’s strange that someone was able to get so close to him without him even realizing it. Next time he will have to pay closer attention. He blames that bright little burst of blue for distracting him, and does not take the time to wonder whether that should have been his clue.

“Hi,” the voice comes, and it is high pitched, reedy, like a bird call. It is the new boy, the one from the other day, and he smiles, the teeth smile, but it goes up into his eyes this time. “I’m Chirrut Imwe. You don’t look much older than me. I don’t understand why we aren’t in the same lessons.” He extends his hand at the same time that he speaks.

There is a moment of hesitation before Baze accepts the hand. “Baze Malbus,” he responds as a greeting, and the other nods as though he had expected to hear that. “The masters should have explained. Our lessons are divided based on skill.” He bites his lip because he’s not sure whether it’s rude to tell the other that he has no skill, having just arrived a few days ago. “If you work hard, maybe you can catch up.” He doesn’t know why it matters whether they are in the same classes. The masters stress teaching one’s self, not speed. If it takes one student longer, it takes them longer. There is no shame in that. 

The other boy, Chirrut, leans closer. He is skinny, and the bones are prominent in his wrists and under his neck, especially when he hunches his shoulders forward as if he has a secret that he is keeping in with his body so that it does not get away. “I’ll catch up,” he says, and it is said in the same way that the masters say things about the Force, like it is true, like he should believe in it because it is right. “You will help me.”

Baze blinks and leans back just a little bit. He doesn’t mind helping the other initiates and does it often, but none of them have ever spoken to him like that, so matter of fact, so forcefully. “You could ask,” he suggests because it is rude to just demand that he do something. 

Chirrut tilts his head a bit, and it makes him look more like a bird, especially when he laughs because he laughs with his mouth wide open, wide enough for Baze to see his teeth and his tongue. “I don’t need to. The Force already told me you would.” And then he clambers to his feet faster than Baze has seen anyone other than the masters move.

“Wait!” he calls after him before the other boy can disappear into thin air like the mirages that some of the pilgrims who come to the temple tell him about. “Did you come from another temple?” Baze doesn’t think there is another temple on Jedha, but he’s not sure how else this boy could already be speaking so strongly about the Force so soon. He has just arrived. 

“No,” Chirrut says, laces his fingers behind his head as though none of this means anything at all, and then starts to walk away, backwards. He keeps his eyes on Baze the entire time and, somehow, manages not to walk into anything on the way back into the building.

Baze is unable to focus for the rest of the day. All he can think of is the strange new boy, the way his smiles are too wide, the way his bones stand out like a cage extending to protect him, that high laugh, how quiet and fast he moves. And the thing he said about the Force. That is the thing that really weighs heavily on his mind. He fails every task he tries, and the masters click their tongues at him disapprovingly and then tell him it is okay, everything will balance itself back out, and he is a good boy, his belief is strong. Tomorrow will be a better day. 

Baze is no longer sure what tomorrow will bring now that there is this terribly new, terribly exciting development.

He is surprised when Chirrut does not speak to him the next day. No, the other boy stays with his group throughout the lessons, during the break. Baze finds himself seeking him out, looking for him in the crowded gardens, in the halls, in the dorm, and when they dine. He cannot say why, but it becomes important for him to be able to pinpoint that smile. Most of the time when he catches it, it is stilled halfway up Chirrut’s face, the fake front. He wonders if anyone else sees where it stops. 

It is almost a week after their first interaction and late at night when they have their next encounter. Baze is supposed to be sleeping, but he has never been good at nodding off when he has something on his mind. A lot of nights he spends thinking about his lessons from the day. Now, though, he thinks about Chirrut, about what the boy said regarding the Force, trying to figure out why, if he wants help, he has not come back. Every time he thinks he will finally slip under the cover of sleep, that bright little blue thing will dance across his mind. Baze is not sure what it is, where it exists, if it is something in the Force or something he has imagined. 

There is a scuffle, the sound of feet sliding across the dorm floor, picking their careful way from one side to the other. Baze waves it off as one of the other initiates having gotten up to make their way to the lavatory. It is not an uncommon sound. What is uncommon is when it approaches his bed, when there is the hiss of his name, and then a hand reaching out for him. He nearly slaps it away, but he is curious.

“Baze,” the voice comes again, and he recognizes it. It is Chirrut. “Scoot over.”

He does so, moving to lean against the wall without even a question as the other boy slips into the bed next to him, tugs the blanket over himself, and stares at him with those eyes. They are big in the darkness, and Baze thinks that they are keen enough to see inside of his mind now that they are this close. He wonders, for a moment, whether Chirrut is one of those mirages that appear in the desert that the wanderers speak of, a mirage made flesh by the Force and brought to him for some unknown purpose. Then Chirrut pinches him, and Baze decides that he is just another boy, after all.

“You think too loud,” Chirrut scolds him, and Baze cannot even be offended because he is just surprised by the words. He doesn’t understand what they mean or how Chirrut could even accuse him of something like that. But he says nothing because what good would it be to pick a fight with this boy. “If you can’t sleep, you might as well help me catch up,” he continues, and his voice is not as low as it should be considering that they are in a room full of sleeping initiates. 

Not for the first time, Baze considers elbowing him but then relents, thinks better of it. Finally, he huffs out a sigh and decides that he really is not doing anything anyway. “Fine,” he agrees, and then something occurs to him. He can ask for something in return. Something small, though. Something that is not a thing at all because that would be inappropriate, it would be taking advantage. “If I help you with your lessons, will you teach me how to be as quick as you?”

The other boy makes a noise, the click of his tongue against the roof of his mouth, and then he reaches out to poke him. Baze tries to get away from the jabbing, but it’s difficult considering he is already against the wall and Chirrut is a fortress of bony knees and elbows and long, prodding fingers. He pokes him in the arms and the stomach and the legs as though gauging something. 

“You’ll never be as quick,” he decrees, and that makes Baze’s face go warmth with embarrassment because he is not sure what in him is lacking for Chirrut to make that statement. “I can probably help you be faster.” There is a beat while Chirrut reaches up higher, and Baze jerks his head away, not keen on being poked in the eye or whatever else might happen. What happens, though, is that Chirrut’s fingers find the lobe of his ear and pull lightly. “I might be able to help you more by teaching you about the Force.”

“I know about the Force.” Baze is frowning into the dark, but he is not sure that Chirrut can see it. “I know more about the Force than you do. I’ve been here many more years, and you said you didn’t come from a temple. I don’t see how you can help me.”

Chirrut pushes closer, and this is what Baze imagines holding a bird without feathers would be like. There are just sharp bits and cold flesh. “I can hear it.” This time he speaks in a true whisper, and Baze has to strain to hear him. And then he moves back a little but not much. He is still completely in Baze’s personal space. It is tempting to ask him to move or to just move him. Baze is bigger, probably stronger, and he has no doubt that he could do it. “You’re warm,” Chirrut sighs, pleased, as though he has not been warm in a long time, and now Baze cannot do anything. Now he just has to allow him to stay there because otherwise he will feel very small and mean indeed.

“Where do you want me to start?” he asks after a moment.

It does not surprise him that Chirrut has closed his eyes and looks very much like he is not paying any attention at all. “Not with the fighting. We don’t have any room for that here.” He hums, thinking. “Help me with the history. Of the Jedi, the kyber, the temple. Start there.”

Baze smiles because this is easy. He loves the history. It is one of his favorite subjects. That is not fair. They are all his favorite subjects. Shifting onto his back so that he can look up at the ceiling, which is less unsettling than either the dark pools of Chirrut’s eyes or the blank fortress of his eyelids, Baze begins to speak, weaving the stories of the Whills, the kyber, NiJedha, everything. He learns that even when Chirrut looks like he is dreaming, he is listening. Every time he pauses, thinking that surely the other boy has finally slipped into sleep, those fingers will brush like feathers over his side, and the still too loud voice will press him to continue. They stay this way the entire night.

The next day is a free day for the initiates. The Masters go out into the community to help the poor and spread the teachings of the Force. Some of the older students accompany them, but the rest of them are expected to spend the time in quiet contemplation or catching up on lessons they are having trouble with. There are bells to mark the passage of the hours, but no one expects them anywhere at any certain time. Baze wakes much later than he should, and is surprised to find that Chirrut is still there, tucked into his side, curled the way that cats sleep, though Baze wonders how comfortable this could possibly be for the other boy. He is just wondering how to get out of the bed without disturbing him when there is a tug at his ear and a voice that, despite being stained with sleep, is still too high, too bright. “Today you help me catch up on the fighting.”

Baze discovers that he cannot even be aggravated by the demand as he just yawns and nods. “Fine,” he says and then sighs because in order for the day to start, they both need to get up. “Move.” Maybe it is the lack of sleep or maybe it is just the slow beginnings of him picking up on the habits of the other, but his tone is a little more forceful, though nice, and he does not ask. 

Chirrut slips out of the bed without a word and starts moving back toward his own, probably to get his things for the day. When Baze looks up after rubbing sleep from his eyes, he catches the fact that, once again, Chirrut’s eyes remain on him while he walks backwards through the dorm. This feat is even more impressive than when he did it in the garden because there are so many other obstacles, but the boy bypasses them all. Baze isn’t sure what to think of it, but he rolls his eyes and shakes his head. The other is probably just showing off. He wouldn’t put it past him considering how he has spoken about the Force.

After getting cleaned and dressed, Baze goes to stand in one of the training rooms, waiting. As it is a rest day, he knows that a lot of the other initiates are taking the time to be children. They are supposed to meditate and study and learn, but a number of them will be in the garden, chasing each other, their high laughter filling the air like flower petals when the Jedhan winds blow through the garden. The masters do not seem to mind, they never chide them for these activities. Baze, however, never takes part. He prefers to spend the free days working. He is starting to get annoyed because it is taking Chirrut quite a long time to join him. Part of him wonders if the other boy has gone back to bed. He cannot quite pin down how serious Chirrut is because of the smiles and the lightness that he imparts to everything.

Instead of leaving the room, Baze settles onto the floor, deciding to use the time wisely, to mediate. It works for a little bit, and then he falls asleep, still drowsy from staying awake most of the night reciting history. When he comes back to himself, there is a warm pressure at his knees and on his forehead. Baze pulls away so quickly he ends up toppling backwards and knocking his head against the wall. A familiar, bird-like laugh splits the air, and then Chirrut’s face appears, looming over him, the grin stretched across his face and up into his eyes. 

“What were you doing?” Baze demands, his own voice rising in pitch at the end more from embarrassment than pain. His head hurts a little, but it is nothing like the sharp little stab of shame worming its way into his heart.

The laugh dies down and even the smile slips as Chirrut seems to see, realize what is happening. He leans down, offering one of his long fingered, sharp wristed hands. “I thought you were meditating. I didn’t mean to startle you. And now I’m sorry I laughed. I didn’t think it would hurt you.”

Instead of taking the hand, Baze pushes himself to his feet, fingers rubbing the sore spot on the back of his head briefly. “I’m not,” he insists, and it’s true. His head isn’t hurt. It’s just sore, there might be a bump, but he has endured worse in training. That is just the way of things.

Chirrut shakes his head, and, before Baze can pivot away, his fingers settle on Baze’s chest, over his heart, for a moment. “I meant here.”

Baze is still dazed, sleep worn at the edges, and too anxious because of being caught off guard to react properly. Instead he just looks at the other boy, and he feels that warmth again. The little tickle at the back of his neck, at the base of his spine, the comforting cat feeling at his ankles. He thinks that if he closes his eyes, if he focuses on the Force, that he might catch that tantalizing little strip of blue worming its way across the blankness. But he doesn’t. Because what will Chirrut think of him if he does that? Why does it seem important what Chirrut thinks?

“Well,” he rubs a hand across the back of his neck, forces all the little feelings away from him like ripples in a pool. “Do you still want to train?” It is an inelegant change of subject, he knows and feels, especially in the downward turn of Chirrut’s lips.

The other nods, once, and then takes a step backward, eyes still on Baze. “Is it okay if we don’t spar yet? Show me the forms. Start at the,” he hesitates and then forces out, “beginning,” like it pains him to say. That is something that Baze can understand, not wanting to hint at inadequacy, covering it with other words, other deeds that shine brighter and mask everything that is lacking. 

They spend the afternoon going through the positions. Chirrut picks things up quickly, and Baze finds himself not completely positive that he is going about teaching the right way because while he knows each and every step to go through, Chirrut will rush ten paces ahead and leave him struggling to recollect what goes after because he needs the entire system. There is one thing that it teaches him, though, and that is how fast Chirrut actually is. Now he understands why the other boy told him that he could never be as quick. There is something inhuman in the way that Chirrut moves, as though trusting something outside of himself to ensure that he plants his feet in the right places with every step and jump and kick. By the time he slides to the ground several hours in, he is breathing hard from the exertion and soaked through with sweat. Chirrut, on the other hand, looks mostly the same as he did when they started, though there is a slightly heavier sound to his breathing that belies the exterior look of ease.

“How are you so fast?” Bazes asks and the question, meant to be an accusation, is soft with awe.

Chirrut is quiet for a moment before folding himself down to sit across from him, body hunched around itself again in that protective posture. Baze wants to chide him to sit up straight the way the masters would if they were here but decides against it. At least for the moment he is tired. The other boy drums his fingers against the mats stretched out on the floor considering whether or not to speak. “I was a thief,” he admits, and that makes Baze start a little, though he says nothing. “I would pickpocket the people in the crowds at the marketplace. You have to be fast, and quiet. I learned to be both. It wasn’t that difficult.”

It is that last phrase that gets him. “You move faster than the masters.”

Chirrut shakes his head.

“You don’t even seem to look where you’re going. Did you learn that while being a thief?”

“Sort of,” Chirrut starts, and he lets his gaze flicker to the floor for a moment. “I used it when I was a pickpocket, but the Force taught it to me.”

Baze is getting aggravated, not with the boy so much as with the fact that does not, cannot understand what he is getting at. He doesn’t know how someone who was a pickpocket can know so much about the Force, how he thinks that he can be directed and taught by the Force. It takes years of meditation and training to feel the first glimmer of the Force. He knows. He knows because he has done it. Who is this boy to waltz through their gates and just proclaim to know about it, to be led by it? It makes his chest tighten because he wants it, and he is terrified he is not good enough to get there.

“Can you stop that?” Chirrut’s voice is not high birdsong now. It is low, a rasp, irritated at the edges, the way people sound when they are in pain.

Baze has no idea what he has done because he hasn’t said anything. No, he has been keeping all of his bitter thoughts to himself. So he just glares at the other.

The other boy cradles his hand in his hands in a gesture that is so fast, so fluid Baze thinks it happens in less than a second, it happens in the same way that water spills, all at once. “You think too loud. You’re too bright. And you’re everywhere.” This, then, is an accusation, but it is one that Baze doesn’t understand. 

That has been the primary feeling defining his life since Chirrut came to the temple: confusion. “What? I didn’t do anything. I didn’t say anything. I don’t understand. And how do you know about the Force anyway?” Hurt and anger color his own voice. What would he see if he closed his eyes right now? What would happen if he reached out for the Force? 

“You don’t have to,” Chirrut sighs, and it is like the Jedhan wind in the trees in the garden, a quiet little shaking. One of the bone sharp shoulders rises, falls, though the head, those bright little eyes remain hidden by the hands. Baze thought that they were perfect hands, but now he can see the scars that crisscross their surface, pale, faded, barely even there unless you look for them. “I just. I just know. It’s just there. It always has been. Maybe it helps, but it’s also a problem.” There’s a wet note to his voice, like the kind that happens when someone is crying. “It’s a big problem when you’re around.”

Baze doesn’t know why those words hurt so much, doesn’t know why they spur him to action. “Fine!” he insists, standing up, stomping one foot against the mat because he doesn’t know what else to do. “If I’m such a problem, leave me alone.” Hands curled into fists at his side, he whirls and starts toward the door. 

The words are soft, but he hears them anyway. Either Chirrut really is no good at whispering, or he means for them to be loud enough to reach Baze’s retreating form. “That’s another problem. I don’t think I can.”

For the next four days, Baze is able to avoid Chirrut even if he is not able to stop noticing him. No, Baze knows where he is every moment, and he’s not sure if it’s because he’s angry with him and needs to know in order to keep avoiding him, or if it’s because he feels the pull, too, and wants this fight to be over so he can friends with the other boy. Whichever one it is, it proves to be distracting. Baze keeps failing at simple things that he had excelled in just days ago. Now all he has are hands full of disappointment, and a tight feeling at the back of his spine that never releases no matter how much he stretches.

It’s another night when Baze cannot sleep. Instead of gazing at the ceiling for hours on end, trying to will sleep to come, he gets up, picks his way through the dorm and to one of the training rooms. It does not escape his notice that it is the same room he and Chirrut had their fight in, but he does not go to another. Baze prefers to meditate in the garden, but the winds of the Jedhan night are too harsh for that. So he settles onto the floor, closes his eyes, and reaches. It is harder to relax than it was before Chirrut joined them. Every time he reaches out for peace, for the Force, it seems to slide just a little further away, a cat that does not want to be caught. Yet still he holds his hands out, still he pushes to explore the corners and the shadows, trying to coax it out of hiding and back to him. He has not done anything wrong to chase it away.

Finally, just when tears are pricking at the corners of his eyes, the sensation tickles at his toes, reassuring, and blue. He reaches for it, but it retreats. Again. Always. Constantly. At this rate, Baze will never be a Guardian, and that makes everything inside of him ache in a way that he did not know was possible. He opens his eyes, covers them with his hands and leans back, feeling lonely and dejected on the mats.

“Hi,” comes the voice, piercing the thick blanket of his sadness.

He never even heard a sound of approach, but he is getting used to that. He let his guard down. This is his own fault, but he never expected Chirrut to stalk him through the night. “Why are you here?” he groans, but he is not upset about the other’s presence so much as his timing. Why did he have to find him right now when he feels washed out and empty? “Was I loud again?” his voice is sharper than he meant it to be when he asks the question, but that is how he feels. 

Baze hears Chirrut sit on the floor. “Too loud and too bright. Like normal.” He hesitates. “But not as bright as usual. What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know if I like that you can do that.”

“Well.” Chirrut shrugs, he can hear it. “I can’t stop so I guess you need to get over it.”

Baze growls, rough and low, though it is not meant as a threat so much as just frustration. “You could just leave me alone.”

If Chirrut’s laughs are bird calls, this one is something injured. “It doesn’t work like that.”

“How would you know? I’ve been trying for years, and I don’t know. I don’t know anything. And you come here and just what? Just know? Just feel it?” Baze is so angry. At himself. “It’s not fair,” he whines, and immediately feels small for uttering it because it makes him seem like a child, makes him feel as young as his years. But his entire world seems to be unraveling, and he can’t focus. He has come so far, but Chirrut already seems to be ahead of him without even trying.

He wonders if the other will leave. If their positions were reversed, he’s not sure what he would do. So when hands rest on knees, which are still crossed and ready for another round of meditating, he is a little surprised. “I think maybe you’re trying too hard,” Chirrut says, and he considers punching him for a second before that burns out of him because the other boy is probably right. “Come on. Sit up. Meditate with me.”

“You don’t meditate, you sleep.”

The trilling bird laughter is back, and Baze can imagine the smile seeping into the dark eyes even without seeing them. The noise tickles that tightness at the back of his spine, unwinds it a little. “Not most of the time. Only when I’ve been up all night because someone,” one of those jabby, sharp little fingers finds his ribs, “won’t stop thinking.”

“I don’t get any sleep either.”

“Exactly. We’re trapped in this vicious cycle. So let’s do something about it. Maybe then we can both sleep.” Chirrut pushes at his side with his entire hand this time. “Get up. You still have a lot you’re supposed to teach me. So I can catch up.”

Baze decides in that moment that this kid is a menace. Lifting his hands from his eyes finally, he sits up to find that Chirrut is, once again, seated in front of him, in perfect meditation form. They are almost knee to knee in fact, that is how close the other boy sits. Baze notices something now that they are close again, the bones are receding. He can still find them, but they do not stand out nearly as starkly as they did when Chirrut arrived, they do not pose such a threat around him. It’s nice, he thinks. It’s good. “What do you want me to do first?” he asks, ready for suggestions because he has obviously been going about this all wrong. 

“Close your eyes,” Chirrut says, “and breathe. Stop thinking about finding the Force. Let it come to you.”

Baze lets go of being annoyed and hurt, he stops focusing on what he is lacking. Instead he focuses on breathing, on letting his body and his mind still. Chirrut’s quiet, metered breathing helps, and he finds himself falling into the same pattern. “Can I try something?” Chirrut whispers, an actual whisper this time, which means that he is capable of it and normally does not bother.

A small twinge of uncertainty spikes up his back, but Baze does not give in to it. Chirrut knows what he is doing. Even if Baze doesn’t want to believe it, he saw it. He has seen the way that Chirrut moves, and it makes sense if he had the Force with him, if he is able to see it and listen to it the way he says he can. Also, he thinks, what will it hurt? Nothing. It hurts nothing to try. It is a lesson that Baze needs to remember more. “Yes,” he says, after a moment.

The other boy moves, he feels his knees press against his and then pulls his head back slightly when a weight rests against it. Baze opens his eyes to finds the dark pools of Chirrut’s looking back at him. “You’re right. It won’t hurt anything,” Chirrut says, and those words confirm that feeling, confirm everything Chirrut has been saying. Without a word, Baze rests his forehead against Chirrut’s. 

He doesn’t understand why, but it does make it easier. Baze isn’t sure how long they sit like that, breathing, meditating. Even though he has trouble moving outward, so focused is he on the points where they share contact, it helps untwist that tightness in his spine. Instead he begins to feel the warmth of the Force coiled around them both. He thinks he can imagine it, supine, on their laps. It is blue and whispery. Though it takes all of his concentration, all of his will, he does not reach for it, he lets it wrap itself around him, around them really, though it does not seem to favor Chirrut so much as simply know him better.

When he opens his eyes, it is almost morning. Chirrut does not stir, and Baze takes a moment to look at his face. Pressed so close, it is hard not to look at him. It is a slight movement, but Baze sees that his lips are quirking, though he cannot tell if it is in words or sleep. He doesn’t know what to do, whether to wake him, to suggest they go back to bed. Baze barely even wants to breathe for fear of disturbing the scene. That knot in his back is gone, and he doesn’t feel as unsettled as he has for weeks now. He counts Chirrut’s eyelashes because there is nothing else to do and waits for him to stir.

He gets to thirty when the other eyes open. They look at each other, into each other, for a long moment until Chirrut’s knees push against Baze’s to separate them, barely. The warmth of the contact continues on like a ghost. “Better?” Chirrut asks.

Baze wants to shrug. He doesn’t want to give the other boy something to gloat over, and yet it would be nice to give him a reason for the smile to go all the way up. “Yes,” he says, climbing to his feet and stretching out some of the twinges in his body that always come from sitting on the floor in that position for long periods of time. The spot on his forehead where they were touching feels warm, but is not any hotter than the rest of his face when he presses his fingers to it. Baze doesn’t understand. “Can we,” he starts, falters, twists his hands together as Chirrut springs to his feet as lightly as ever. He wants to ask if they can mediate like that again because it helped. It really did help.

Chirrut tilts his head at him, an appraising look like he is trying to get all the information he can without a word. Knowing Chirrut, that is probably exactly what he is doing. “Of course,” he says, and then continues. “You still need to tell me more about the other lessons. And we need to train. I would like to be able to spar with you by the end of the month. I’ll never catch up at this rate. So you need to stop being difficult.”

Before Baze can say anything, defend himself in any way, remind Chirrut that none of this is standard so he is actually the one making everything difficult, the other boy has walked out of the room and disappeared down the hall. It doesn’t occur to Baze until later, after he has returned to his bed, that he cannot recall if Chirrut turned away or looked at him as he retreated. He isn’t sure why it matters.

This is how the years pass, with them helping and supporting each other. Chirrut does what he says and catches up quicker than any of the masters were anticipating considering how flippant he seems. And Baze, as he gets older, understands it better, feels less like it is a slight on his own abilities. The Force is stronger with Chirrut, but it is still a cat, still fickle, and even Chirrut cannot pick it up whenever he wants to. It slides around their ankles, but it does so much more when they are together. This is something they learn as quickly as Chirrut learns to pin him to the ground when they spar, even though Baze is thicker, heavier, harder to move.

Baze learns something else as the years pass, though he doesn’t understand it. It is just one of those things about Chirrut that seems to flit, birdlike, around them. Sometimes with no warning whatsoever, Chirrut walks backwards out of rooms, eyes on him like his form is about to waver into smoke and disappear on a strong breeze. When asked about it, Chirrut only smiles, rolls his shoulders in that formless gesture that imparts both a shrug as well as a defensive mechanism, the holdover from childhood when he would press his shoulders in, create the bone cage around himself. Baze knows so much. He can recite the passages from almost every book in the temple, but he does not know what this movement means, cannot decipher it, cannot get an answer.

Most of the time when Chirrut teases, when he doesn’t want to answer something, he simply says something about the will of the Force, but that does not even leave his tongue for this. Nothing does. It is not like Chirrut to be silent. If anything, Chirrut is always talking. He says it’s to make up for the fact that Baze is never talking but always thinking. Baze fills the mental space between them with enough emotion to fill a freighter so Chirrut has to fill the real world with sound or the difference between the two will crush them both. It’s that kind of talk that makes Baze roll his eyes, though fondly. There is no better word for what Baze feels for Chirrut than fondness. At least as far as he has found. Though even it lacks, even if is full of holes that Baze cannot comprehend.

At sixteen, almost seventeen, he isn’t sure that he will ever have a better word, and he isn’t sure that it really matters all that much. Fond. It is close to found, which is also something he feels with Chirrut, like he has been seen, been found. When he closes his eyes, fond is blue, the same color he feels or sees in the Force when they meditate together. And it is a smile, too big, too wide, with too many teeth that stretches all the way into dark eyes every time. Why would he ever need any word other than fond? Why doesn’t it feel like enough?

The day after Chirrut turns sixteen, three months and five days until Baze turns seventeen, he starts walking backwards again. In earnest this time. Suddenly it is not a haphazard, occasional occurrence. Every time he leaves a room without Baze, his eyes stay fixed on him as he exits, feet lightly avoiding every obstacle in his way. Even when they leave together, he will intently watch the other’s face as though searching for something. 

Baze says nothing about it, just watches and wonders. He figures that if he keeps thinking about it, maybe Chrirut will broach the subject first. That still happens a lot, him not being able to sleep or just being worried about something during the course of the day, Chirrut slipping into his bed at night, always cold and always sharp at the edges, to tell him to stop being so loud, so bright, so everywhere. It’s easier and yet stranger now that they are older and share a room. Easier because they no longer have to be so quiet, though Baze never pitches his voice louder than a shallow whisper as he tells Chirrut about the books he has read, whatever new bit of information he has gleaned, and Chirrut always speaks in that not quite a whisper voice even though Baze knows damn well that he could if he wanted to.

It is strange because Baze wants to tell him not to ever sleep anywhere else. Baze thinks about just pushing the beds together, but he can’t figure out how to arrange them in the room, can’t think of the words to use to tell Chirrut that he sleeps better when there’s an elbow in his side and cold feet on his ankle. He doesn’t know the words to use to describe the absence when he wakes without fingers in his side. Yet he also enjoys it when Chirrut pushes at him, tells him to scoot over, or, exceptionally rare, when he wakes to find Chirrut curled up against his back without ever realizing that he got in bed with him in the first place. 

All of these things freeze him. There are too many options, and Baze prefers to not take any of them. So he just lets things continue the way they have always been. He lets Chirrut come to him and makes no move to change the situation even though he wants to, even though he has no idea how exactly he wants to change it. He just knows there is something hanging off to the side, something unsaid, something undefinable. A word that he doesn’t even know yet.

They do not really celebrate birthdays in the temple. Most of the initiates and the masters alike have forgotten theirs because the passage of time is arbitrary and the reckoning of one year after another does not bring anything to you. It is better to focus on what you can do with your time than how it is uncurling around you. Do not count your years, count your deeds. The Force will give you as many of both as you need. Baze knows all the sentiments, and he believes them. Despite all of that, though, he remembers Chirrut’s birthday, and Chirrut knows his, which is how they keep track of how old they are, when they overlap, when Baze pulls ahead again. Most years, they do nothing, say nothing, exchange nothing. Sometimes the only thing that happens is Chirrut saying, on Baze’s birthday, “Once again the old fool.” and some years it is Baze saying, on Chirrut’s birthday, “Who is the old fool now?” Other years, it is different. Sometimes they pass gifts to each other, stories, flowers, interesting pebbles, nothing big but always precious because it is something exchanged between them.

Baze has prepared a gift for this birthday, but when Chirrut started walking backwards again, it stilled him and now it has been a week. He isn’t sure whether he can still give it without it looking like a strange little afterthought. It’s not that Chirrut is avoiding him because they still spend just as much time together as before. Chirrut has slept in his bed at least four nights this week, but Baze is still unsettled by the resurrection of the walking backwards habit, by the duration and the intensity. It has never been like this before. When they were children, he thought it was a game. As they got older, he simply thought it was Chirrut showing off.

Now he cannot even define it.

Baze spends the night gazing at the ceiling, the gift he found for Chirrut tucked into his hand, his fingers rubbing against the smooth surface. He has tried to mediate, failed, tried to think through lessons, failed, even attempted to spar against himself in his mind’s eyes. Nothing works. He cannot make his thoughts, increasingly about Chirrut, stop. He thinks about the dark eyes, not just when they linger on him during those departures, but how they look full of smiles, when they spar. How heavy those eyelashes seem when his eyes are closed. The patterns of scars he knows dot Chirrut’s flesh, the ones gained from his life as a pickpocket almost completely faded away now, known only to Baze because he watched them smooth with the passage of time, and the new ones that the other has gained during his years here, normally in training when he gets too sure about his abilities in the Force and tries a move or a jump that is beyond him. No one in the whole universe is as brave as Chirrut, Baze thinks. He certainly is not. The other side to that is that no one in the universe seems to be as reckless as Chirrut, either, which is the worrying part.

There is the sound of sheets moving from across the room, a sigh, long and soft but still just a little judgmental, and then feet on the floor. Baze lifts the covers before Chirrut even reaches him, this is how in sync they are after so long. Chirrut creeps in all at once, the way that water overflows, and somehow he is cold even though Baze knows he was just in bed. It is as if the Jedhan nights steal all the warmth from the other’s body. 

“Hi,” Chirrut says as he settles on his side.

Baze presses his back against the wall, turns so he can look at Chirrut, and tries not to think about the way the shadows linger on certain parts of his face. His hands cup the gift against his chest. “Too loud?”

Chirrut shakes his head, seeming to trust in the fact that Baze will be able to see it or hear it. Or just know. The way that Chirrut just knows. Baze wishes he had insight like that, but he does not. He never will have, and he has mostly come to terms with this over the years. He has Chirrut, and that seems like so very much on it’s own. “No,” he says, and there’s this sleepy quality to Chirrut’s voice that is not normally there. “Too bright this time. Like a lantern blazing.” Fingers, still long and bony, tap against Baze’s chest, over his heart, practically on the closed hands he holds against his own abdomen. “Right here. It’s okay, though. I don’t expect you to be able to dampen that.” Despite the drowsiness, Chirrut is obviously in the mood to talk, and Baze will let him do so, forever.

Although he does wish that he had thought to put the gift somewhere else because keeping his hands where they are will quickly become uncomfortable and obvious. He is positive that Chirrut has already noticed and is simply not saying anything yet. Yet does even need to be stressed. It is Chirrut, after all, so eventually he will ask about it or just attempt to take it. Whatever seems like the most obnoxious thing at the time. Baze might be so fond of this man that he swells to burst with the delight of it, but that does not mean that Chirrut is not still a menace as he declared years ago. If anything, he is more of one now that he has knowledge and training and flesh that is sharp from practice rather than because it is just stretched haphazardly over bones.

“What are you thinking about?” Chirrut asks, and his fingers touch possessively in the dark, whatever patches of skin they can find, poking, prodding. Baze has gotten used to this over the years. Chirrut is tactile, especially in his affection. He tends to touch everyone, clapping hands on shoulders, patting backs, clasping fingers together in victory, but Baze has seen that there are differences between other people and them. With him, Chirrut slides fingers through his hair, short cropped like all the initiates, tugs at his ears, presses into his clavicles, tickles his sides, holds his hand, pokes his stomach, as if he is creating an entirely new language that resides only in the physical. Sometimes Baze isn’t sure that he knows what the touches mean, but he allows them. They make that bright blue Force streak in his mind glow, they make his stomach do flips. 

“Now or before?” he asks, delays the answering of the question.

Chirrut makes a low noise that says he knows what game Baze is playing, but he will allow it. He is sleepy and the cold is slowly leaving his body as he seems to absorb the extra, intense heat that Baze radiates. They keep each other comfortable, and this is another reason Baze would happily allow him into his bed every single night. “Either. Both. Or, if you’re not feeling like talking about either, tell me a story. Or a joke.” Then he smiles and shakes his head, fingers trailing over the back of Baze’s hand like he wants to hold it, and there is no way to disguise that he is hiding something now. “No, not a joke. You’re terrible at them. Let me tell the jokes.” His fingers tap against the clasped hands, calling their attention there. “Is this why you were so bright in my mind?”

Baze sighs, world rumbling and low, and closes his eyes so that he does not have to look at Chirrut, who is probably smirking. “No, it’s nothing. It’s for you. It’s.” Why does talking to Chirrut get harder the closer he gets? 

“For me?” The tone brightens, any hint of sleep forced out of it. The fingers are now trying to uncurl his fists from around the object, impatient and demanding as always.

It is useless fighting him. Chirrut is practically a force of nature. He is as persistent and ever present as the Jedhan wind, as flexible and bubbling as water, as precious as the kyber crystals in the caves beneath the temple. Baze is none of them. He is just someone looking at them all in awe. His hands open, revealing the hidden treasure within, and Chirrut’s fingers dart into the cup to find it and pull it free. “Someone did just have a birthday,” he says as Chirrut claims the prize, though his touch seems to linger on his palm longer than necessary.

“Here I thought you had forgotten in your old age.”

Baze almost says that he didn’t forget, he would never forget, he was just unnerved by the eyes, and the walking, but he doesn’t because he’s not sure he wants the answer to the question mark of the other man’s eyes and the dance of feet that perfectly manage to avoid everything without seeing anything. It is as lovely to watch Chirrut walk out of rooms that way as it is unnerving. If he asks, maybe he will stop looking at him altogether. “You can’t gloat about how young you are for awhile yet,” he reminds him.

Chirrut is holding the present up, trying to find enough light in the room to see it properly. Baze doesn’t need light to see it because he has been looking at it for months, whenever he found a spare moment to himself. It is a small carving made from some pale blue stone, a bird with one wing stretched out slightly, the other held close. Baze bartered in the marketplace for it on a free day when he was supposed to be preaching the teachings of the Force to the crowds. Instead he spent the whole day cleaning the merchant’s shop in exchange for it. Because when he looked at it, all he saw was Chirrut from the bird’s posture to the shade of blue. 

“Describe it to me,” Chirrut finally says. “It is dark. I can’t see it properly. Tell me what it is, tell me why you got it. I like the sound of your voice.” There is movement as Chirrut places the carving under the bed, a place of safety, and then he moves closer to him, settles his ear against Baze’s chest as he has done for years now when he asks for stories. The first time he did it, Baze startled away, but he has grown comfortable with it now. He learns new things just so he can talk about them, so Chirrut can hear them like this, so he can pass his fingers across Chirrut’s hair occasionally as he speaks.

The closeness, the familiarity of the gesture, makes him forget the strangeness, the questions prickling at the back of his mind. “It’s a bird,” he begins and quickly adds before he can be cut off by demands, “I don’t know what kind. It’s just a bird carved from smooth, blue stone. The color of the blue is the same as the Force color in my mind.” They have discussed this so he doesn’t need to elaborate on it. “There is a crack in the stone, a fissure deep inside of it, that is only visible if it is held just so in the right light. The merchant said that only the strongest pieces of this type of stone can have a crack at their heart and still be carved. He said that usually that kind of flaw would undermine the integrity of the piece.”

“You bought this for me?”

It is not the question Baze was expecting. He was prepared to answer more questions about the bird, how it was carved, the position, the story behind the stone. The entire afternoon that he spent with the merchant, he asked questions even though it was uncomfortable. Base is rarely comfortable talking to strangers. This question makes him stumble a bit. Chirrut knows he has no money. As initiates none of them have money unless a master bids them to purchase something for the temple, and they both know that he would never use that money for his own purposes. “I traded for it.”

“What did you trade?”

Baze does not understand why this is more important than the item itself, but the answer will not take anything away from the present. “My labor. I cleaned.”

Chirrut hums and turns his head so that his lips brush across Baze’s chest, and that makes his lungs and throat both tighten though Baze cannot say exactly why. “Thank you.” The words are pressed into his skin along with the lips. 

It only lasts a moment. It lasts forever. Baze wishes he could take the moment, take the memory and trap it in rock. The merchant he got the carved bird from had other things, insects in some kind of substance that he claimed had been frozen there forever. Baze wishes he could make this feeling, this warm glow, into something tangible and visual so that it, too, could be frozen. For always. So he can take it out and run his fingers over it, one day, when this has slipped away from him. They will not be initiates forever, after all. What happens after this ends? What is the will of the Force for them?

He swallows, questions pushing at his lips, questions that he is not sure Chirrut has the answers for, either. And they are also questions that he is not sure he wants the answer to. What if they are not the answers that he wants? “Chirrut,” he says, after a moment.

The only answer is a hum, low, drowsy, because Chirrut is obviously still on the brink of sleep. Baze has learned that this is sometimes conducive to getting the best answers to questions. Almost asleep Chirrut is less inclined to smart ass remarks, more liable to just tell the truth of things. The downside is that you have to act fast or the other will slip into sleep fully and then there will be no answers at all.

His fingers brush over the short hair on Chirrut’s head. “Why did you start walking backwards again?”

It only takes a moment for the tension to creep through Chirrut’s body. He can feel it since the other is pressed so close against him. All of the sleep drains away, and he knows that the man is completely awake now. “I forget that you were here before me. I forget about the years we were apart because it feels like life started here.” Chirrut accuses him of speaking heavily and in flowery terms sometimes, but they are both prone to it on occasion.

Baze tries not to be concerned when Chirrut pulls away slightly, just enough that his dark eyes can look at him. “Don’t you know the story, the custom?” One hand comes up to rest on Baze’s cheek, and it is distracting.

“Walking backwards to fight one’s sins?” he asks and shrugs. “I’ve heard of it.” But only heard of it. Baze has no context for it. His world has been the temple and the teachings of the Force. He does not understand why this practice would have any weight. For him, the understanding is logical rather than emotional, and he has never seen anyone in the temple walls do it, retain it longer than maybe a year after joining. He never tied Chirrut’s habit of it to that story because it was Chirrut, he thought it was just a Chirrut thing.

“That’s a,” Chirrut pauses, and Baze does not often see the other at a loss for words. “The purpose behind it isn’t that black and white for everyone. It’s not always sins. That’s one translation, one meaning. For some of us, it’s fear more than anything. It’s about facing your fear, looking it in the eyes, overcoming it. Sin is too heavy. There’s a finality in that version that my family,” his voice shakes a little, and Baze has never really heard Chirrut mention his family before, just the pick pocketing, just the Force. “In my family, it wasn’t leaving something behind. It was about finding the strength to do something. To change your own world.”

Baze has no particular affinity for the Force, there is nothing special about him, but he can hear the chord of sadness in Chirrut’s voice, he can hear the loss. Chirrut very rarely sounds lost. Tired, yes, sad sometimes, though rarely. More often it is not so much the expression of negative emotions that he sees play out on his friend, but the lack of full conviction when it comes to positive ones. Chirrut fakes smiles and makes jokes because those are easier for him than ripping everything up to expose the pain. Keep moving, go where the Force wills you to go, don’t linger on pain. Of the two of them, it is Baze who lingers. It is Baze who lumbers and feels things pressing down on him from all sides because he lets it. Chirrut always seemed so much lighter than all of that, equipped with feathered wings and the Force, light, dancing, able to ride the winds of Jedha and bypass all of it. Tranquil, peaceful, serene.

And Baze feels very small indeed for never thinking, never really asking about life before the temple. It’s not that it didn’t occur to him, but Baze can be bad about pressing for information, trusting that people will bring things up if they want to talk about it. He wonders if Chirrut would have told him these things if he had asked about them years ago, and he finds that he cannot answer it. 

A thought occurs to him as he watches the dark eyes which are still on him and do not even seem to be blinking. “Are you afraid of me?” He cannot comprehend that this would be true, but he also cannot fathom another reason for the backwards walking when combined with this newly presented information.

“Never. It’s not fear of you. That’s. That’s not what I’m doing, that’s not what I’m facing.” The fingers slide down his cheek, trace over his lips.

Baze shifts, and his throat is suddenly very dry. He is aware of how close Chirrut is, keenly aware of how the fingers feel against his skin. That knot at the base of his skull, the one that he felt for the first time the day he saw Chirrut, seems to have gotten tighter, more noticeable for the first time in a long time. He just doesn’t understand. He doesn’t know what Chirrut is saying, and he doesn’t understand this almost ache in his soul. All he can think of is the word fond, how it was enough in the past, and yet how it is not even close to being enough now. Yet he cannot think of another word. He cannot think of hardly anything at all. “I’ll help you,” he manages to force the words out, soft, reverent, his lips moving against those fingers. “Just tell me what I can do.”

It’s not difficult to hear the way that Chirrut’s voice sticks in his throat, the way that his breathing seems to be ragged. Even when they spar, it can be difficult to shake his friend’s semblance of calm. And, now, looking into his eyes, fingers on his eyes, now Chirrut seems shaken. Baze waits. Breaths and waits. “When we were younger, it was fear about being here, about following the Force where it led me, which was to you. I didn’t know if it was the right thing to do, to leave the life I had known for this when I was already so far behind, but it worked out.” Chirrut pauses, takes a breath and begins again, voice quieter. “Lately, though, I’ve been trying to face my fear about telling you something.”

This strikes him as strange. Chirrut talks almost non-stop. In recent years, he has even started talking aloud while they mediate, whispering one part of the mantra and expecting Baze to repeat the next line. It is not a common method of meditation, but it doesn’t bother either of them. If anything it helps them both focus. Even when they sleep, Chirrut will mutter things, as though his mind and his mouth go too fast to contain everything within his body. The idea that he has been trying to scrape up the courage to share something with him is baffling to Baze. It also opens a maw in the pit of his stomach because he immediately fears that it is something bad. Baze feels like his heart is being folded up into tiny pieces, unable to expand in order to pump blood through his body.

He doesn’t even realize that he is frowning until Chirrut’s fingers are pressed at the corner of his lip. “It’s not that,” he says, and Baze will never stop being shaken by how much Chirrut seems to know his mind sometimes whether it is because of the Force or just because he is that good at reading him after all these years. 

There is another pause and then a torrent of words that lap like waves. “I love you. I have loved you for years. I love your voice when you tell me stories, and I love that you laugh at the stupid jokes you don’t understand. I love that you remember my birthday. I love that your hands are impossibly large, almost as impossibly large as your ears.” His fingers tug at one of the lobes. “I love everything about you even the things that are constantly infuriating. Maybe especially those things. I wasn’t sure if or when I should tell you. But I made a promise to myself to tell you this year, after my birthday, and I’ve been.” He swallows, and the dark eyes, finally, flicker away, overwhelmed, overwrought. “I was talking myself into it. I was afraid of telling you and losing you because of it.”

Baze’s heart is beating about a million miles an hours, fast enough that he is surprised it hasn’t managed to find some way to accelerate through his flesh and out of his body. He is struck, again, by the beauty of Chirrut’s eyelashes, the softness of his fingertips, the shadows on the planes of his face. The word he has used for Chirrut for years surfaces again. Fond. It is small and ineffectual. It is dwarfed by the word that Chirrut has spoken into the night, into the dark spaces between them. Love. And that word seems so much larger than any word Baze has heard in his entire life. If fond is a moon, love is a sun. Love is more than a sun, love is the Force, trickling blue through the universe, underwriting everything. Fond is just a glimmer of that, a pale imitation. 

Despite the fact that he has read everything in the temple, words do not belong to Baze. He borrows them for a time and then releases them or gives them to Chirrut. Chirrut is the one who can command words, he’s the one who can talk about nothing and everything. Everything real. And he is normally the one who takes quick action as well. Baze has been following someone his entire life, the masters, Chirrut. 

This time he is the one to close the distance, he is the one to settle his fingers on Chirrut’s cheek, which makes the other look up at him again with those dark eyes, those always searching, too dark and too penetrating eyes. The feeling in his stomach and the knot at the back of his skull are both so tight that he’s not sure what to do. Suddenly he understand the gesture, the idea of walking backwards, facing your fear, staring it down instead of turning your back to it, fleeing. Even if you are not strong enough to tackle it, you are showing it that you will be. It’s simply a matter of preparation. 

He has been thinking of how he doesn’t want to lose Chirrut. He has been thinking about pushing their beds together and telling Chirrut how he can’t sleep properly without him. He has been mulling over the meaning of a word and looking in books for other ones, better ones. Baze has been turning his back on something that scared him without even realizing it because he couldn’t even look it in the eyes long enough to see it properly. But Chirrut did. Because that is how Chirrut is, brave and reckless. 

“I don’t understand everything that’s happening, but I don’t want you to go anywhere,” he says and licks his lips, nervous, unsure, fighting about fifteen different impulses of what to do next.

In the end, Baze doesn’t have to decide because Chirrut does it for both of them. Chirrut surges forward to close that small bit of space left between them to press a kiss onto his lips. It is blue. The world is blue. Like the carved bird that Baze got for Chirrut. Like the color of the Jedhan sky on very rare nights. Like that crackling thread in the Force that has been looping itself around them since that first day when their eyes met across a crowded room and Baze watched as a smile made its way up a face and into its eyes. 

He has to swallow about ten times before he can speak after Chirrut pulls away. “I never knew that it was possible for you to be afraid of anything.”

Chirrut is looking at him, one arm draped around his waist, legs tangled up together, and Baze can’t even remember how that happened, but he doesn’t mind. “Only one thing.”

“You won’t lose me.” 

“No, not now.” The teasing note is back in Chirrut’s voice. He can never be serious for long. “I cast a Force spell on you. Now you’re mine forever.”

“That’s not how the Force works.” Baze gruffs, but he is teasing. Maybe that is exactly how the Force works. 

“It’s not like you would know anyway.” There is such a level of mock arrogance in the tone that Baze decides he cannot let it stand. Using the element of surprise and his greater bulk, he flips Chirrut onto his back, straddles him and begins to tickle him. Chirrut’s laughter is high and free like birds in flight, like the glow of kyber crystals. The tickling escalates to more kissing, sloppy and inelegant but each press of lips, each slide of hands over skin erases the word fond from the slate of Baze’s mind. Each sigh that huffs out of the side of Chirrut’s mouth, pleased and soft, replaces the word altogether with love.

By the time Baze’s birthday comes around, they have rearranged the room and pushed their beds together. And Chirrut still walks out of rooms backwards sometimes, but now Baze does too, though he is nowhere near as good at it, so that they can look at the other as long as possible.


End file.
